In the Name of the Tsar: the Rise of the Third Rome

Queen Victoria's coronation marked the beginning of a great and glorious era: under the dazzling light of the British rule, the first industrial revolution came to an end, bringing unprecedented prosperity to urban development. But behind this prosperity was a heavy price for ordinary workers. Child laborers crawled in dark mines, female workers worked day and night in textile workshops, and slums were overcrowded, with cholera and tuberculosis raging among them. The poor in the workhouse worked in prison-like asylums in exchange for a subsistence handout. On the European continent, the famous Austrian Prime Minister Metternich single-handedly constructed the Vienna System, uniting various countries to form a fortress of the old order and blocking the torrent of revolution. The suffering caused by the Napoleonic Wars had ended, and the compromise of the great powers brought a brief peace to the troubled European continent; although the fire of revolution was temporarily extinguished, the ideas of nationalism and liberalism were still very much alive. Meanwhile, Tsarist Russia in the north remained under the iron-fisted rule of Nicholas I. In the aftermath of the Decembrist uprising, the authoritarian system became increasingly tight. Serfs accounted for the vast majority of the population. They were tied to the land and their destiny was determined by the nobles. Strict censorship of books and newspapers, widespread illiteracy, and backward systems and technology are constraining this empire. However, in this vast and silent land, the undercurrent of change is quietly surging. When the palms of serfs touched books for the first time, the Siberian permafrost was poured by railways and steel, and the roar of steam engines destroyed the aristocrats' ecstasy. As authoritarian rule becomes a thing of the past in this land, a transformed new Russia will emerge.